Reply #50: In the archives here at DU is a post from a WV'ian who... [View All]

[AP]

...was friends with the head of the WV Dem Party or of some big union there. He described an event that this guy held every four years which Democratic presidential candidates had attended for decades (since Truman, IIRC). He said that in 2000, Al Gore sent Tipper to this labor event, while Al went to an environmentalist event somewhere else.

Now, this union guy doesn't live to polute the environment. He lives to make sure that the people who are the footsoldiers in capitalism's army get a fair percentage of the wealth they create for the owners of capital. He also hopes that when economic power accumulates in their hands that people, and not capital, they will get to have some control over the political direction America takes. If these people are getting sick from their jobs, they will vote for cleaner methods to do their jobs. If they see that coal isn't sustainable, they'll vote for job training programs. They won't vote for candidates who close their access to the courts. Ideally, they'll be able to put their kids through good public schools so they can grow up to invent alternative fuel sources so their generation doesn't die from black lung or cancer. And so their parents vote for good public schools.

This WVian labor guy worked hard for Al Gore even though he didn't bother showing up in WV to show his support for labor, but it was hard for him to convince his union members that Al Gore cared about them, especially since that very night he was getting publicity putting trees first a couple states away. And of course, Republicans are ready to pounce once democrats step into these traps which Al walked right into, because they've been creating and laying them since 1973.